This week we are leaning into multiple metaphors: AI as a mirror, UX design as a window or room, and life as information. Plus: read about Michael Levin's upcoming presentation at the Imagining Summit, Helen's Book of the Week, and our upcoming events.
It’s easy to fall prey to the design illusion that because LLMs look sleek, they must be well-designed. But aesthetics alone do not equal design. As Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.”
It’s curious that these two papers, tackling such similar ideas, came out at the same time. Is this coincidence, or does it tell us something about where the study of life and intelligence is heading?
An interview with Chris Summerfield about his book Natural General Intelligence.
Chris Summerfield is a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Oxford. His work is concerned with understanding how humans learn and make decisions. He is interested in how humans acquire new concepts or patterns in data, and how they use this information to make decisions in novel settings. He's also a research scientist at Deepmind.
Earlier this year, Chris released a book called Natural General Intelligence, How understanding the brain can help us build AI. This couldn’t be more timely given talk of AGI and in this episode we talk with Chris about his work and what he’s learned about humans from studying AI and what he’s learned about AI by studying humans. We talk about his aim to provide a bridge between the theories of those who study biological brains and the practice of those who are seeking to build artificial brains, something we find perpetually fascinating.
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Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music
The Artificiality Weekend Briefing: About AI, Not Written by AI
